Mark believed him. The story wasn’t a new one. People had been doing two things with the earth for centuries upon centuries: digging for their fortunes beneath it, and burying their dead within it. In Trapdoor, the two had collided.
“Pershing’s land has the best entrance chamber,” Evan said, “but he never had a clue what kind of cave was there. That’s what Cecil kept telling my father. ‘Be patient, be patient. This guy, Pershing, he’ll get bored and sell his interest. Because it really isn’t that special of a cave over there. Dozens like it have opened and closed already.’ Problem was, Pershing wanted to keep exploring it. He was pecking on the borders. Still, you had to work to get through it from over there. Nobody but Ridley Bats in the Belfry Barnes could’ve done it. If what he says is true? If he actually brought Sarah out of there in the dark?” Evan shook his head. “If he managed that, they should build a statue of him and put it on the courthouse lawn. Because that is some heroic work, I’m not kidding you. That’s flat-out miraculous. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I suppose nobody ever will.”
He fell silent and joined Mark in looking into the dark stones for a time.
“I understand why Pershing was willing to deal with Ridley,” Mark said finally, “but what value did Cecil have? He was your father’s partner, not Ridley’s. Why include him in the trust?”
“Because Cecil kept Pershing clean. Kept his secrets, same as he kept mine. Cecil, he’s damn good at tending secrets. Only man better is Ridley Barnes. Except that son of a bitch apparently just can’t remember his.” Evan shook his head. “When Ridley brought her body out... I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t. My father was feeding her, he was giving her water, he was keeping her alive and he’d never let her see him. He was always in the dark. She didn’t know who he was, that’s what he said. She didn’t know it was him. So he was going to wait for the right opportunity and he was going to take her back. Was supposed to be within a day. That was the promise they made me. She’d be out by the end of the day. I didn’t know he was writing ransom notes then. I’ll tell you who did know: Cecil.”
Evan wiped at his face and left streaks of dirt under his eyes.
“End of the day turned into a second day, and then a third, and she stayed in, and I was too scared to talk. I mean, if it had just been me going to jail, maybe. Thing was, that was my father who had her. And as damn foolish as it sounds — and it would sound even more foolish if you’d known the nasty son of a bitch — I couldn’t tell the police it was my father. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. He’d done seven years in prison waiting to come back to this. It was family land, had been for a hundred and thirty years, and he was going to take it back. Besides, everything was going to be fine, right? Everything was going to work out fine. If everybody just stayed silent, it’d work out. Cecil told me that plenty of times.
“Then Ridley came out with her body, and Dad was gone. I figured she’d died from the cold, and he’d taken off when he realized what he’d let happen. Once he saw he was looking at murder, he bailed fast, and bailed for good. Cecil thought the same. It wouldn’t have been unlike him. But then it began to feel like Ridley had killed her because he was so damn strange about it, saying he couldn’t remember what had happened. Meanwhile the old man’s gone. I was scared to come here; hell, scared to go anywhere. There was no trace of him, though. I told myself that was good, but you know what? You can’t walk away from your family. You all walk together, whether you can see them there beside you or not.”
“How long was it before you found him?”
“More than a year. I told Cecil, and he said to leave him where he lay. Said the facts of the situation hadn’t changed — I brought Sarah in, my dad grabbed her, I lied to the police about it, and she died. I’d still go to prison. He was telling the truth about that much. I would have gone then, and I will go now. I’m an accessory, always have been. Didn’t have to be, but I made the wrong choice and trusted the wrong people. I thought she’d come back out safe. I was promised that she would. I had the chance to be something different, and I didn’t take it.”
He fell silent. The two of them lay there in the wet earth under the decaying trailer and Evan Borders stared into the cave entrance as if willing it to turn into something else. A door to the past. A second chance.
“You think Ridley’s still down there?” Mark asked eventually.
“If he’s still alive, he’s still down there. We’ll let you go take a look.”
Mark had no desire to venture down that flimsy ladder into the narrowing walls and the blackness.
“We’ll go together,” he said. “Show me how to get to him.”
Evan laughed. “Sure. I have no idea how to get to him. And I don’t want to. It’s time for me to roll. They probably won’t let me get far now, but I’ll give ’er hell, right? Make the run I should’ve made ten years ago.” He offered Mark the flashlight. “Go on.”
“Just drive,” Mark said. “I’ll give you some lead time. But give me the chance to get the right people here.”
Evan shook his head. “Let’s not make it complicated. You make it to the bottom of that ladder, and you’re on your own. I’ll leave it for you. You can climb right on back up if you want. But you’re going to start at the bottom whether you choose to take the ladder or not. I’d be careful walking up on Ridley Barnes down there, though. It usually goes bad.”
Mark made it only three steps down before he hesitated. The ladder swayed with every step and each rung flexed as if it were about to break.
“It ain’t so bad,” Evan said. “But if I were you, I’d put the flashlight in my teeth so I could use both hands, at least.”
Mark put the flashlight in his teeth and bit down on the rubber handle so he could have both hands on the ladder. The climb felt long, thirty feet at least, maybe forty, and still his feet hadn’t touched the ground. When he heard a grinding noise, he looked up to see Evan sliding the manhole cover back in place.
“With any luck,” Evan called, “you’ll be talking to the police before I am. We’ll see. But if you do, you tell them something. Tell them I loved that girl. People won’t believe it, but it needs to be said.”
He shoved the lid all the way over the top then and sealed Mark in the blackness.
66
Mark’s feet touched stone but still he clung to the ladder, feeling around carefully to make certain it was the floor and not just a ledge. He had to be fifty feet down, and it was a straight descent. He tried to imagine Carson Borders taking a look at that crack in the earth and deciding to rappel down to see what he had. How many tries had it taken him?
He stepped away from the ladder and took the flashlight out of his mouth and for the first time he saw the room around him. There was nothing impressive about it. It had the size and feel of the cellar in an old house, cold and cramped, with a low ceiling and smell of old moisture. There was an opening about twenty feet across that looked like a tunnel. Mark considered it and then looked up at the ladder, wondering if the best course of action was simply to climb back out and call for help.
That was when he heard the moaning.
The sound seemed far away, but it was clear, a low wail of pain or anguish or both, and the way it whispered through the cave and echoed raised the hair on Mark’s arms and neck.
“Ridley?” he called, and even in the cramped room, his voice sounded small.